i am not dead
by but seriously
Summary: He thrashes and kicks and pounds and screams, for the girl in gold, for someone, for something, anything at all. I am not dead, not yet, not yet. He screams until his throat bleeds into the water (I am not dead), pink surrounding him before rushing back into his throat (I am not dead), bracken water wrapping its fingers around his throat, beckoning him into silence (I am not—)


He wakes with blood in the crevices of his fingernails and a humming in the back of his throat. There are feathers all over him, small and tiny and whisper-soft, flitting between his blood-caked nails as he grasps at them, trying to make sense of it all. He must have torn the pillows somehow. There's a blonde nestled at his side, warm breath purring under his arm, and with a sweep of his eyes he sees that she's unscathed, not a smear of blood in her golden curls, not a scratch on her sun-dappled skin. It's the damnedest thing.

He turns to his left and sees dark panelling, so black he feels the humming in his throat turn into a thrashing, and it's not when he turns back to his right and sees the same panelling that it's his heart, giving him away to the fear of desolate darkness suddenly entrenching him, treacherous thing that it is.

He tries to scramble to his feet but his head knocks against something hard and cold, and his hands turn into fists that pound out a rhythm that thuds and reverberates in his ears. He screams, but hears nothing. His screaming turns into a garble of whispering, guilty prayers and feverish promises, and his fingers, they burn and they bleed as he scrapes against the darkness, and he can't cry, because he realizes with a sickening horror that there's water all around him, pounding and pounding and pounding.

He falls asleep that way, with his eyes burning and his ears ringing, and just before he gives himself up to the vault that has become his mind, he sees sunshine dancing across his skin.

.

.

.

Sometimes he sees valleys of colour behind his closed eyes as he wakes, and he drops to his knees and buries his fingers into the cool, clean grass. He wants to lower his face to the ground and breathe it all in, the pink clouds, the endless stretch of periwinkle blue all around him, the girl stretched before him in swaths of gold. Always as he wakes, before the chill starts to set into his skin and steal its way into his bones.

It's the damnedest thing.

.

.

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Some days, he'll sit there for hours on end, letting his eyes slowly adjust to the darkness, counting the dust motes and the bubbles swirling around him. I'm not dead, he thinks, and he tries to convince himself that it is a small victory.

Other days he thrashes and kicks and pounds and _screams_, for the girl in gold, for the pink clouds, for someone, for something, anything at all. I am not dead, not yet, not yet. He screams until his throat bleeds into the water (_I am not dead_), pink surrounding him before rushing back into his throat (_I am not dead_), bracken water wrapping its fingers around his throat, beckoning him into silence (_I am not_—)

She's purring into his ear as his body shudders and shakes, and when he closes his eyes he can see that her lips are red.

.

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He wakes hungry, always. His clothes are slowly rotting away in the still water, and he fists them into his stomach, hoping to curb the gnawing in his gut. How makes himself bleed, watching it spread like ash before disappearing into the slits of his metal tomb. He presses his face to the door and blows bubbles until there is no more breath in him.

Fight it off, he urges; tries not to think of the hunger eating away at him. _Bury it_.

His presses wrinkled fingers into his face, wondering if his skin would peel right off if he presses hard enough.

.

.

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This is his punishment, he thinks. For not dying when his father shot him one hundred and forty-nine years ago. For not dying when he should have.

This is his punishment, and this is hell.

It doesn't burn, it doesn't consume. It is drowning. Suffocating, all-pervading drowning.

.

.

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She laughs into his ear and he wants to snatch it into his fingers and hold it to his chest. She's warm, and he keeps her nestled by his side, kissing her golden hair and her freckled shoulder. She looks at him with big blue eyes that swim with tears. "Why is he doing this to you?"

"I don't know," he finds himself replying absently, letting her sweep his hair back from his forehead with soft fingers. He tries not to close his eyes. "I wish I did."

"I promise you, I will not let anything happen to you." He sees nothing but blue as she presses her forehead against his, eyes wide and unblinking. "I promise, Stefan."

"I know," he manages to choke out, and she stares down at him in surprise as water gurgles out of his throat.

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.

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He wants to _breathe_, damn it. He wants to wake up from this watery hellhole and throw his windows open and stretch his limbs out and think, _Ain't this the life? _He wants to bury his teeth into pulpy flesh and red-hot veins, wants to draw life out with his teeth and his tongue. He wants the humming in the back of his throat to still. He wants the screaming in his teeth to stop. He wants blood.

"Help me," he cries, tugging at the hem of her dress. "_Help me_." His fingers are swollen and tinged with blue where the white of his flesh hasn't turned into a puckered mess of pulp. She presses kiss after kiss into his wet hair, and he thinks how this isn't how it's supposed to be. They're supposed to be dry, in bed, with feathers all around. She's supposed to have sunlight on her skin and berries on her lips, she's supposed to laugh into his chest, not cry into his hair.

"I can't," she says.

"Caroline," he splutters, hands groping in earnest, but when he wakes his arms are wrapped around himself.

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He thinks he must have lay that way, staring unseeingly at the door that would not open, locked into place by approximately 4 atm of water. He knows this because he's been acing Physics for the last twenty years of his life. He should be dead, he thinks helplessly. I wish I were dead.

He's ready, he thinks, and he unclenches his fists and loosens his weary muscles. He feels dizzy and lightheaded. I'm ready.

He sees a flash of brilliant light, hears laughter purring in his ears and warmth in his chest as he closes his eyes, it's the damnedest thing.

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.

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Stefan wakes with a gasp, fingers clawing at nothing, eyes squinted into slits against the sudden brightness. There's a screaming in his teeth and a tearing in the back of his throat, and he feels warmth all around him—in his clothes, in his skin, in his bones. He wants to shrink away.

She hands him a mug of something hot, and he nearly cries when he sips at the blood before taking it in huge gulps, his chin becoming slick and red as he all but guzzles at it, the hunger never settling. She looks at him with quiet blue eyes and hands him another mug, then another, then another, then another, until the front of his shirt becomes a mess of red, until his blood is pounding through his veins, until he's lying, cheeks wet, body trembling, in her arms.

Her breath sings sweet songs in his ear, and she's warm. He closes his eyes and waits for himself to wake up. He realizes, too late, that he isn't going to be waking up when he finds himself drifting off to sleep.

The next time he wakes he finds another mug of blood handed to him, but he waves it away despite the tingling of his gums. He looks at her with a different sort of hunger, and says, "I'm not dead."

"It's the damnedest thing," Caroline says, head tilted just the slightest.


End file.
